like a man's!" Impersonal, professional appreciation of the use of a niblick! "The old lady's got to step down, hey?" She watched him narrowly.

Nonsense!" he exploded. "Not with your tournament sense, Jo!"

Mollified, she patted the back of his big, sun-burned hand. "Oh, I'll win, old man-if you want me to!"

And, leaning on Ted's apparently unqualified support, she did win the first two holes easily.

When she had taken the honor at the third tee, and sent out another clean drive, she looked, for the first time, to see if her opponent had lost any of her composure. The same irrepressible good humor shone back, even although she had just sliced again. Jo watched her tripping away, a bobbing gay sprite, her impudent orange-and-blue sweater defying the soft, overcast morning sky.

a

Just as if this game was, after all, only a trifling incident in her superabundant young life—just as if she were laughing little at Jo... like that dandelion head, blown over from the field, which Jo was mistaking for her ball. . .

Ted was watching the girl, too... forgetting to be professional. . .

Something in Jo began to slip-slide. In Ted, too? His cautioning prophecy of the girl's skill began to justify itself. (She captured the next three holes.) His appreciation neglected to hide itself in covert glances, burst out in "Look at that-gee, a bird of an approach!" "Dead-eye Dick!" as a long, perfect putt scored Susan one up on the ninth green.

The tee for the tenth hole brought them around by the club. A crowd had begun to gather and follow-becoming a nettling irritant to Jo-increasing some sense of loss of support. With Susan, still that unshakable serenity, that refusal to take this recreation seriously.

Jo watched her-chatting with her caddy now-stopping elflike on tiptoe saw her run an impulsive hand through the air, as if to feel the drooping leaves. "Oh, aren't they too-lovely!" They were Chris's weeping willows, now wearing the full silver-green of maturity.

She insisted on chatting with them, too (a thing Jo detested in a match), whenever they met on tee or fairway. "Aren't

fathers silly!" Jo heard her saying it confidingly to Ted. "They get so haired up over little things!"

Again, on the twelfth tee, when they were waiting for the couple ahead to take their second shot: "Aren't you glad we came back, Ted? Isn't this most as much fun as that beach picnic?"

"So you did think of staying longer?" Jo said it casually to Ted, her heart thumping foolishly. And at once she regretted the question-for the girl answered it.

"Oh, yes, we both wanted to-till dad telephoned for me to come right home. He said I'd been drawn in the first round.”

Ted, with a very red face, stooped down to make his mother's tee. And Jo, with a feeling of complete frustration, wanted to knock something down-something which this girl, with her disarming ingenuousness, was piling between herself and her former self-confidence.

Something, which she was piling_between herself and her son. . . . For Ted, already forgetting to be ashamed of his neglect of her, forgetting her entirely, was looking at Susan with a fatuous, kiddish grin. And they were both giggling again.

The ball

Idiots! . . . Jo gripped her stick, drove impetuously-wildly rolled off the tee into a pile of rocks. Some one in the crowd smothered a laugh. Dislike for the girl sharpened into definite hatred.

Her ball was out of bounds. She drove again, losing a stroke. Susan and Ted strolled along leaving her to follow. Comrades Pals. . . .

That determination to win, more sinister and ugly, possessed her. She would prove that she could get along without Ted's support. She called it tournament nerve! It must come to her rescue-take her into its cold, calculating hands-give her this thing she wanted insanely at this moment-to win this match! Mr. Paige, openly preening his feathers at his daughter's lead, seemed to accept the challenge.

Jo Renwick did win. By a hair's breadth-by a few blades of grass, to put it literally. Two inches more on her last putt, and Susan Paige would have tied the match.

Queer that the youngster should get

careless at the last, when she had been holing out with such uncanny accuracy -never more than two putts on any green! And that last putt, only eighteen inches the sort you'd say, if it weren't a match: "Oh, I'll grant you that!"

A long gasp of chagrin escaped the big gallery when she flubbed that last shot. Not that they cared so much who wonbut it was a shame not to have a more clean-cut decision!

Jo herself wished she hadn't become suddenly conscious of those two kids again, just before Susan took the stroke. . She had so successfully put them out of her mind up to then-had paid no attention to Ted at all, those last holes. She knew her playing must have impressed him. Like an apologetic puppy, whom she had punished, he had returnedclose to her heels, repledging his loyalty -his voice strangely gentle, like Chris's. "Now you're coming back, Jo! Great work!"

She acknowledged his congratulations now in a bright, impersonal way. He might have been any one of the crowdold friends, pressing around, telling her they were proud of her as usual, that it was the best match they had had! Susan herself, without a tinge of apparent regret: "Oh, that was fun, Mrs. Renwick! You're too good-and," she lowered her voice to a chirplike whisper, "I'm awfully glad you did win!" She was looking apologetically toward her father just beyond as she took Jo's hand. He had come up, was also shaking Jo's hand, briskly, their eyes meeting, uncovering the hostility their words belied, making her keenly conscious of the vindictive spirit which had colored her game. Making her remember Susan's "Aren't fathers silly?" Mothers, too?...

What did Ted really think of her?

He was waiting for her on the outskirts -bashful, more like Chris than she had ever before admitted. "It's what I wanted to see you win, Jo! I thought perhaps you thought I didn't

"I know you did!" Ridiculous tears sprang to her eyes. "That's all right, old thing! See you later!" She went on to the locker-room with the joy of a girl whose lover has returned-telling herself that she had won for Ted-after all!

VOL. LXXVII.—36

The cool water of the shower-bath was just beginning to give new vigor to her hot, tired body, when some stray remarks outside reversed her line of thought.

"Mighty close, wasn't it? Glad we have some new golf pep, at last!" "It has become rather monotonous !" The conversation stopped with suspicious suddenness.

But the innuendoes had cast a chill over her enthusiasm. The women were no particular friends of hers, but, for the moment, they seemed to speak for the whole club-who would be only too glad of a new champion! . . . She shivered under the icy stream. Hadn't they all clustered about this Susan Paige after the match, just as if she had really won? ...

...

Just as if she had won! . . . Hadn't she all but won? A scant two inches to gloat over! She turned off the cold water, began to rub, but continued to shiver. This child had won-in other more subtle ways-had made her, Josephine Renwick, forty-one her last birthday, feel childish, immature

At the thought of the aftermath with Ted, it was her turn to become shy, ashamed-fearing that Ted had been a little ashamed for her. She slunk out of the club, looked about for the car, determining to buy her way back into favor by praising her opponent, which she had hitherto withheld. . . .

A natty, this-season gray roadster whisked by-down the drive. Ted, his arm along the back of the seat, held an icecream cone in the other hand, which he was feeding to the driver! They were gone, a splash of color and laughter.

The insolence of them! Idiot, herself, that she had even thought she could be a part of it . . . this youth!

She stood there confounded, wondering . . . why had Ted wanted her to win? Was it only because he was afraid to have her lose? She was an older woman, to whom he felt he must be kind.

She drove her own car home, picking up a neighbor.

"Your opponent's an attractive little thing-that Paige girl!" "Yes, isn't she!"

"They say her dad's had a golf stick in her hands since she was eight. Wants to make a national champion of her."

"Of course not!" Jo breathed with relief, when the woman descended at her destination.

When Jo rounded the corner of the marsh road, the gray car was just pulling away, leaving Chris standing with Ted at the end of the walk. Ted must have called Chris out to meet Susan.

As she joined them later in the livingroom, Chris greeted her. "Congratulations, Jo! Ted says you won the matchthat you'll win the last leg all right now!" The same as always-Chris assuming an interest in this fetish, profession, of hers, just to please her! Last leg! Last leg. Crazily tilting on it, she sank into

a chair.

"Awful day for golf! So muggy!" She let her head drop against the chairback. The same as always-all sitting about, waiting for luncheon to be served. She closed her eyes.

But she need not have worried that they would want her to talk.

"How'd you like her, dad?"

Jo looked up from under her fringe of lashes. Ted had stretched out on a divan next his father, with the same confidential eagerness as when he and she had indulged in powwows of gossip after golf matches.

Chris was measuring his fingers appraisingly. "Seems like a nice girl, Ted! I like her looks seems as if she had something to her." Then he looked up with that quizzical expression which excluded others from his little jokes. "What else can she do, son-except play golf?"

that's got this golf bug! She's no mughunter!" Then he saw his mother, squirmed, sat up, too, his hands fumbling in his pockets.

It was Jo's answer. She was standing up-her cheeks flaming, her throat dry, choking. She found herself out on the sun-porch-fussing with the partially laid lunch-table.

Mug-hunter... mug-hunter... was that what Ted thought of her! Her son stigmatizing her on the very ground which she thought she was cherishing for him! That determination to win she looked it squarely in the face. Greed! Plain greed!

Like a brilliant cinema flashed by again that last scene on the eighteenth greenthe girl taking her putter for the last shot looking first at her father-then at Ted.

That look of such intimate understanding-annoying her at the time. Jo made it speak unmistakable words now -"What of it if I don't win! Your mother cares so much more than I do! And what is a game of golf where we are concerned!"

Ted was straddling a chair, deep in a man-to-man discussion with his father. In desperate loneliness, she leaned forward, softly touched the bowl of roses. Delicate petals fluttered to the table. The flowers were already dead.

"Father, I'm going to work. Got anything down at the shop?"

Chris got up with the alacrity of one who meets a friend for whom he has waited a long time. waited a long time. "Have a cigar, son!"

Jo was out in the hall, climbing the stairs, not caring where she went. In the alcove of the upper hall was Chris's desk, untidy, strewn with the bills he had been cleaning up before he went away. A long procession of blue slips-club voucherscaddy fees, new balls, sticks, drinks, luncheons for out-of-town guests-marched across the desk. Necessary expenses of a mug-hunter! On the undusted desk-top an unemptied ash-tray gave out a foul odor.

She emptied it, ran and got a dustcloth, made nervous dabs around, tried to arrange the vouchers and bills in orderly piles. As if clutching for some old interest of the past. . .

She found it presently in their room. Chris's brown leather suit-case, dogeared, rounded out of shape-like Chris's back thrown open on the couch, halffilled with neat rows of rolled-up underwear, socks, toilet articles- She could see his deft fingers arranging them. She remembered he was leaving on the late afternoon train for Summerville.

Instinctively she ran to the closet, pulled down her bag-opened it beside the other-began pulling garments out of bureau drawers. The two bags, close together, were pals, fellow-travellers on many good times. The familiarity of their personal belongings re-established old intimacies.

And she was wondering about their journey's end-who would meet them at the depot which of the old crowd would be back. . . . She took out her

...

new crêpe for the banquet. Chris liked her in yellow..

"Hello, there! Didn't you hear us calling you to lunch, Jo? Why, mother—” Chris was crossing the room, his face twisted into incredulity.

Shestraightened up-put out her empty hand-closed it convulsively over his. "Fold this for me, Chris. I never can get things into a suit-case the way you can." "Here, give it to me, Jo!"

His hands shook a little, as he spread out the slippery garment on the bed. But the incredulity melted into the twisted smile.

At the sound of Ted covering the stairs, he looked around at her. This time, he wanted to share his little joke. "History repeats itself, don't it, mother? He's hit

just like me right between the eyes. It'll be fun-to go back- Won't it?"

JAY I not, once again, borrow the text of my sermon from Dom Anatole? It is written in The Amethyst Ring: "M. Gustave Lacarelle had a thick, long, and fair mustache, which, as it determined his physiognomy, determined also his character." He looked like an ancient Gaul; from his student days, he had been nicknamed the Gaul; and he felt in honor bound to uphold the Gallic tradition, which, as we all know, consists in making love to every Poor Lacarelle found it irksome at times to maintain the standard of his race, especially when Madame Bergeret fell-plump-into his arms. But "noblesse oblige," and he pursued resignedly the course of his Gallic destiny.

Among our manifold delusions, there are few that are so pathetic, and none perhaps that is so dangerous, as this desire to live up to some preconceived type. Excellent Germans, adipose, beer-sodden, home-loving, possibly musical and metaphysical, whom Providence had intended for Pantoffelhelden, felt it their duty to rouse in their hearts the Berserker rage, the tearing fury of Blond Beasts, because such amiable traits had, in remote ages, characterized their hypothetical ancestors. Englishmen, and, above all, English governments, have been known to spurn as un-English the plain, immediate solution of an urgent problem, because it was truer to form to "muddle through somehow." I remember a lady of unusual scientific attainments who, because she was born in Baltimore, found it necessary to cultivate a number of odd little superstitions, with the proud apology: "I am Southern, you know."

It is particularly useless to discuss the race problem at all, so long as people

make a virtue of their prejudice and impregnably entrench themselves therein. You might have Logic, Science, Democracy, and Christianity on your side: all that your opponents have to answer is: "We are Southern, and we have the race feeling in the marrow of our bones. This is the one central fact, which you cannot understand, but which you will have to accept. All your specious arguments will be shattered against it." Thus a good little Christian from the South, who, finding herself at some missionary banquet by the side of a negro, rushed away from the table, convulsed with indignation. "But, my dear," said a lady who had followed her, "do you think that Jesus would take it in such a way?"-"Ah, well! Jesus came from Heaven: but I come from Alabama, and I won't stand it."

We have never been very much impressed with the argument that such feelings were "in the blood." We had been told that it was "in the blood" of Frenchmen and Germans to hate one another, just as cats hate dogs, horses hate camels, women hate mice, and Orangemen hate Sinn Feiners. But we realized that the noblest Germans, like Goethe and Nietzsche, had loved France, no more, however, than the noblest Frenchmen, Hugo, Michelet, Renan, had loved Germany. Even if we admitted that there were "something in the blood," this would not alter in the slightest degree the question of right and wrong. I am enough of a Fundamentalist to believe in the depravity of human nature, and in the necessity of some grace divine to curb its evil instincts. It is "in the blood" of man to kill, ravish, and get drunk. It has been done from earliest times, by all races, in all countries, under all religions. If we were told "Thou shalt not kill," it is because the Legislator knew that human nature is bent on killing. All laws, re